Book Three Launch Post-Mortem: A Sense of Completion

Estimated reading time: 6-7 minutes

Well, I did it. I managed to write and publish the third book in my Zombie Girl Omega series—Insurrection—in less than a year. It was the most aggressive goal I’ve taken on as a writer. For perspective: the first book I wrote, Zombie Girl Omega: Initiation, took me ten years to create, write, rewrite, and publish. The second book in the series, Contention, took two-and-some-change years to get to final book form. Insurrection took nine months, start to finish. Yes, the same as producing a small human, which I’ve done twice.

When Things Are Out of Your Hands

Near the end of 2025, I discovered the Sacramento Book Festival had moved from June to April, putting it within two weeks of my scheduled launch date for Book Three. That meant I needed to push my timeline at least three weeks earlier than the festival if I wanted to complete layout, publish, and get printed copies in hand for distribution in time.

Insert mid-project scramble here.

After arguing with myself over whether it was remotely possible without Hermione’s Time-Turner—completely realistic, not at all stressful—I committed to it. I finagled my already tight timeline and triple-checked with my developmental editor, proofreader, line editor, and cover artist that what I was proposing was feasible on their side. They all agreed and committed to the revised timing.

In the end, it worked out, and I managed to have my book ready for the book festival by the skin of my teeth. A few extra gray hairs and wrinkles may have been added as well.

Before I Dive In

I’ve decided to push for book four, Defection, to be completed within six months of Insurrection’s release, by the end of 2026. It’ll require commitment and focus, but I believe it’s doable. I want to keep the momentum going from book three.

Given this new challenge I’ve laid before myself, there’s one thing to take care of before I fall down this rabbit hole—conduct a post mortem on Insurrection.

What Is a Post-Mortem?

In general terms, after a project wraps up, you conduct a post-mortem—also called a lessons learned—about that project. It typically involves all the key players from a project, getting together in one or two sessions, with someone to facilitate the discussion and keep things on track, and preferably someone to take copious notes. The intent is to determine the successes and challenges of a project, so that the next time it happens, it goes better.

A post-mortem needs to be conducted within days of finishing a project to be most effective. We, humans, tend to forget things quickly, and what we do remember becomes increasingly out of proportion to reality as time goes on.

Post-Mortem Topics

What went well—what were the successes that should be replicated in the next effort? There’s no sense in reinventing something that works. Iterate and make it work even better.
What were the challenges—what could have been done better? What were the mistakes, the slip-ups, the unintended consequences of decisions, and those mysterious side effects that nobody predicted?

Once there’s an understanding of a project’s successes and the impact of its challenges, there’s an opportunity to iterate—avoid repeating the same mistakes, plan smarter, and ensure timelines and deliverables are realistic and achievable. You could have the best planning in the world to start with, but if your schedule or deliverables are off, it won’t matter. You’ll still fail.

Sometimes this means pulling the plug on a project rather than letting it dwindle and die a slow, very painful death. I’ve witnessed it. I nearly had to do it with this book.

Evaluating a Book Launch

Drawing on my UX background, I use standard prompts and questions to uncover a project’s successes and challenges. For a post-mortem, I work within three general categories measured against evaluation criteria:

Evaluation Criteria 1: Project Goal

Did I meet my original objective?

For me, this is black and white. My goal statement was:

I will publish my third ZGO book by April 28, 2026.

Simple, clean, not much room for confusion. A specific, actionable goal statement makes it easy to track back to when you’re evaluating success or failure.

Evaluation Criteria 2: Satisfaction

How satisfied am I with the outcome—how the project was run and concluded?

I measure this in a few different ways to give myself a more grounded understanding:

A 1–5 Likert scale—to capture that initial, impulsive response when asked, how did it go?
An emotional check-in—identify three to five emotions I feel most strongly as I stand at the finish line.
What went well—at least three items that went well overall with little to no setbacks

Evaluation Criteria 3: Timeline and Milestones

How did my actual timeline compare to my planned timeline—actual versus proposed?

This is the most granular of my evaluations. Did I include the correct milestones in my timeline and put them in the correct order? Did I hit my milestones for writing and publishing?

The Results

Criteria 1: Project Goal

Complete. I successfully met my goal, publishing the paperback by April 19 and the ebook by April 28.

Criteria 2: Satisfaction

My Rating: 4 out of 5.

The project could have gone more smoothly and been less stressful, with more flexibility built in. I am extremely pleased with how the writing and the story developed, and with the end product—the book itself.

Emotions at completion: Satisfied. Excited. Exhausted. Eager.

3-5 Things That Went Well

Editor–writer communication. It was easy to share ideas with my developmental editor and get her feedback throughout the process.
Completion of cover art in advance. I started working with my ZGO cover artist in the fall of 2025, giving me time to iterate and refine before finishing Book Three’s cover. Bonus: the front cover for Book Four was ready by the time I published Book Three, allowing me to begin promoting it immediately.
Including a line editor in my process. For the past two books, I have been my own line editor—with mixed results, much of it done post-production when I had little time for true line editing during creation. Having a dedicated line editor who was absolutely spot-on allowed me to back off and trust the final polish to someone else. Instead of editing as I go, it was purely insert-and-format during layout. My preference.
Speaking with a book marketing consultant. Super helpful and not a huge expense. It was the first time I’d reached out to someone specifically in book marketing to understand their process and approach to promotion. A lot of it was general advice, but there was also information new to me. I’m not a book marketing expert—just like I’m not an editor—and sometimes eating a little humble pie to ask for advice is eye-opening and genuinely useful.

Criteria 3: Timeline and Milestones

Although my milestones were correct and the order of execution was sound, I experienced a one- to two-week slip in meeting milestone targets throughout the project. I also ran into some trouble with Amazon KDP—specifically, the pre-order functionality for ebooks and understanding the timing around it. I’ll touch on it briefly in this blog post, and in more detail in my next post, Self-Marketing Doesn’t Suck Part 2: Amazon’s KDP Needs Help.

So, now I have a better picture of this effort—of writing a third book. Knowing the successes helps, for certain, but it’s the challenges I’m most interested in. These can inform me on how to better prepare myself for future success with Defection.

For the next phase of this exercise, I’m going to apply the Five Whys to the biggest challenge I faced: my slipping schedule.

The Five Whys

This is where you, the intrepid reader, ask what these Five Whys are, and why you should care.

Put simply, you define/state a challenge and ask why, repeatedly. Five tends to be a nice, odd number, but it’s not a requirement. It could be three whys instead of five. All that matters is asking why, which helps get past superficial excuses and drill down to the root cause. You want the root cause. None of this symptomatic bullshit.

Applying the Five Whys

Stated Challenge: Repeatedly missed milestone deadlines by one to two weeks.

Why? When one milestone was missed, subsequent ones experienced the cascading effect of that lag.
Why? Neither my editors nor I was able to make up for that lost time over the remainder of the project—and any additional lapses compounded the delay.
Why? The buffer space I built in between milestones was not enough to allow for flexibility or unforeseen circumstances.
Why? I didn’t account for enough time per phase in case things didn’t go perfectly—and as we all know, perfect is an illusion.
Why? My overall timeline was too tight to produce the book comfortably, especially during the editing phase. I gave adequate time to worldbuilding and development, but not to the editing iterations.

Ding, ding, ding. There’s the root cause.

My timeline was too tight. I didn’t provide enough of a buffer between phases.

How Now, Brown Cow?

Based on this post-mortem, I need to improve the timeline, specifically during the editing phase. I need to allow more time for each milestone—even an extra week can make a difference—and increase the buffer between phases from the current one week to perhaps two.

My book three timeline and milestones looked like this, and covered nine months:

Story Statement and Goals – 1 week
Story Outline – 2 weeks
Cover Art RFQ – 1 day
Updated/New Character Profiles – 1 week
1^st Draft of Manuscript – 3 months
Dev Editor Review – 2 months
Cover Art (runs concurrently with manuscript writing and edits) – 2-4 months
2^nd Draft of Manuscript (1 month)
ISBN and Barcode Acquisition (1 day)
Cover Layout and Design (2 days)
Line Edits (1 month)
3^rd Draft of Manuscript (2 weeks)
Proofreader (1 month)
Front Matter (2 days)
Back Matter (2 days)
Final Manuscript (3 days)
Paperback File (1 week)
Kindle File (1 week)
Amazon KDP Publishing (1 day)

For book four, I’ll be tightening my end of the writing process, particularly the largest portion—Draft 1 of the Manuscript. I’ve already updated the outline, worked through the new characters, and finished the cover art, so I can “save time” on those milestones. The real tell will be if I can book my editors at the times that I need them for the duration I’m requesting. Ultimately, I am beholden to those I work with in this regard, and if the schedule must shift to accommodate, then so be it.

With those two action items in mind, I’ve built out project timelines for my next two books—and when I say next two, I don’t mean Books Four and Five of ZGO. I mean, I’m actively applying what I’ve learned beyond this series. After all, ZGO was always intended to be the beginning, not the end.

Next on my writing list:

Zombie Girl Omega, Book Four: Defection
Book One of my new Syntropy Trilogy: The Children of Eden

The real challenge I’m testing myself on is whether I can develop and write more than one story in an overlapping manner—and do it successfully. Children of Eden is the ambitious one on that list. Unlike ZGO, which has a well-developed tone, cadence, characters, and world already in place, this new series is built from scratch—different characters, a completely different world, and a new POV (third-person limited, which is new territory for me). I’ll see what shape it’s in after my dev editor’s feedback. If it needs more time, I’d rather delay than put out a story that isn’t quite there yet.

I’m overall pleased with Insurrection—both the story and the process that produced it. The post-mortem confirms it was a success, with a couple of clear improvements to carry over. Learn from mistakes. Iterate. Move forward.

As my daughter will attest, there are a lot of stories in my head that need to get out. To do that, I have one goal: write at least one book a year.

Okay, maybe two. I’d really like two. 😉

Listening to on Spotify: Legend – Yuko’s Night Mix by Yuko Rade

Chain Reading: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen, Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill, Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer, I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, The 12^th Planet by Zacharia Sitchin

Writing Nook: The Bear and The Spear (Worldbuilding)

Latest Run: 4 miles